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Agencies like CPS have to walk a very fine line on the false positive vs false negative optimization. It’s a really horrible reality that they need to make dec

Agencies like CPS have to walk a very fine line on the false positive vs false negative optimization. It’s a really horrible reality that they need to make decisions like this. But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family? There’s no good answer here. If there was negligence and a cover up, then yeah to hell with them, if not then mistakes have aweful repercussions. CPS must be one of the hardest jobs in the country.

jimbob45 2y ago
No they don't? The standard in the US is "innocent until proven guilty". "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".
bluefirebrand 2y ago
> But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family The foster system does not produce very great results from what I understand, including the chance that a child will be abused by a foster family. The statistically likely outcomes for a child with a loving family plummet substantially if they go into the foster system Unfortunately an abused child going into the foster system isn't likely to see their potential outcomes improve by a substantial amount Therefore, taking a loved child away from an innocent family is way worse and it's not even close
- binarymax 2y ago
  So by your argument CPS just…shouldn’t do anything? If foster care for an abused child won’t help, then what’s the point?
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    If they aren't absolutely beyond any doubt certain that the child is being neglected or abused, then yes of course they shouldn't do anything Their job is to protect at risk kids, not just shuffle kids to new homes The damage that a false positive would do to a child is unfathomable The foster system does overall help abused children, but fostered kids don't have as good outcomes in general as non-fostered kids
    - petsfed 2y ago
      Man, I dunno how opiod-crisis-adjacent you are, but I am very close to it. I cannot imagine that relocating a child to their grandparents is automatically worse than letting them stay in a home that stinks of burnt heroine, where their trash-bag full of laundry for the relocation stinks of urine.
      - bluefirebrand 2y ago
        To clarify, I'm talking about outcomes of children who are in families that aren't abusing them, versus children who have been placed in foster care (for any reason) Comparing outcomes of children who are being abused against children in foster care will show improvement generally. But there's still a pretty wide gap between their outcomes and the outcomes of children in healthy families Also, do grandparents really count as "the foster system"?
        petsfed 2y ago
        At least in my state (Washington), CPS prefers to relocate kids to nearby family members over actual foster homes, for what I hope are obvious reasons. There is always a balancing of false-positives vs. false-negatives, in any attempt to restrict any behavior. And while I agree that the consequences of the false-positives are dire, sometimes unthinkable, CPS and its power to remove children from their homes is in response to something also dire and unthinkable. You seem to be arguing that the consequences of a false positive vastly outweigh the consequences of a false negative. Viewing the consequences of an admittedly light-duty false negative (that is, abuse or neglect that, for one reason or another, hasn't received a CPS response), and being on the periphery of another much worse false negative (via contact with a member of the jury), I am uncertain. Which is worse? Lacking the power to remove a child from a bad situation, or occasionally sending a child into a bad situation? I don't have a good answer for that question. I just disagree with the idea that either is indisputably worse than the other. Its awful that there is a situation that we have to choose at all. And unambiguously, the foster system must be reformed. The OP even quotes the family's lawyer as saying that CPS disproportionately goes after poorer families ("neglect" and "poverty" can look the same, even if the cause is wildly different). But I do not think the foster system is so broken that we should abolish CPS entirely and just accept actual child abuse as unpreventable.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    The comment you are replying to talks about "false positive vs false negative optimization". Are there cases where CPS should just not do anything because the probability of abuse is so low? Yes. If you are implying that we should take "no chances", then CPS should just take everybody's children away from them. After all, there's always more than 0% chance that someone is beating their child.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Right but unless the decision is "never enter children into the foster system," then there will be a decision boundary that results in some amount of both false positives and false negatives[1]. We can, like you allude to, adjust the boundary to weigh them differently. How would you relatively weigh the cost of false negatives to false positives? The relative benefit of true positive to true negatives? 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000? 1. There's likely some other statistical assumptions I'm glossing over, but I'll leave that to someone more knowledgeable about that than I
  - bluefirebrand 2y ago
    > How would you relatively weigh the cost of false negatives to false positives Imagine having a loving family that treats you super well and being taken away from them. Then imagine being placed in another home with new people you don't know, with new rules and attitudes that haven't evolved organically with you as you've grown. Now you start to get in trouble for stuff you used to do that your parents didn't care about, because the new parents don't have the same tolerance for the same things That's not even that bad really Imagine having siblings who throw the fact you're adopted in your face when they're mad at you Or having foster parents that actually are abusers themselves, but they're better at not being caught. I don't think you can really truly calculate the potential harm that taking a loved child from a healthy family and placing them into foster care could do
    - kelseyfrog 2y ago
      I have imagined all of those and still conclude that they need to be compared in order to weigh the pros and cons of making the decision. If one makes such a decision without weighing the tradeoffs, they're being negligent. If they refuse to make the decision, then they're choosing to never place abused children in foster care which is one of the options in the decision process, so they're still making a decision. There is no escape hatch. I'd encourage you to do the same imaginative thought experiment for the kid who's in an abusive bio-family. Would it change how you decide?
      - 2y ago
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  I knew a guy who was a surgeon at a big children's hospital. He said that, if a kid came in with damage from abuse, and they didn't detect it and intervene, the odds were 50% that the next time they saw the child, it would be dead. I'm not sure that taking a loved child and putting it in the foster system is worse than missing an abused child and leaving it with the abusing family. So I categorically dispute that "taking a loved child away from an innocent family is way worse and it's not even close".
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    > I knew a guy who was a surgeon at a big children's hospital. He said that, if a kid came in with damage from abuse, and they didn't detect it and intervene, the odds were 50% that the next time they saw the child, it would be dead. If I interpret this charitably, maybe they only saw the worst of the worst because of their position as a surgeon? If I interpret this less than charitably, you are implying that a single incidence of child abuse has about 50% fatality rate. This would be simply false. You don't have to go back further in time than 40 years, and it was commonplace for pretty much everybody to beat their children. If 50% was an actual fatality rate for a single incidence, population worldwide would have dwindled due to these fatalities.
    - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
      I think it's like this: If there is child abuse serious enough to require hospitalization, and the authorities don't intervene at that time, the next instance of child abuse serious enough to come to the attention of the authorities has a 50% chance of being fatal. (So I guess that I'm agreeing with your "worst of the worst" interpretation.) In the case in question, the kid was already in the hospital. So at that point, we're at the "worst of the worst" situation... if it's abuse. So they want to be really sure whether it's abuse. Note well: This is not to defend CPS for the things they did in this case. I am merely saying that this is why CPS wants to look very carefully at such cases.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    It depends on perspective and who's making the judgment. It is absolutely worse for the love child. I think it's questionable if a third party has a right to judge and take action
- mrcartmeneses 2y ago
  This statement seems to be based on a false premise that foster care is bad care (it is often very good care where I originate from, UK) and ignores the fact that sometimes parents kill their children and that there are many children in desperate need of help. The greater problem with the CPS or similar agencies is underfunding. This leads to families only having dealings with them when the circumstances are suspected of being dire, rather than CPS having the resources to support parents in a meaningful way over a meaningful period of time. Such meaningful support helps to reduce the need for more drastic interventions and allows social workers to have much more knowledge of the families they are helping and of when interventions are needed.
  - em-bee 2y ago
    it's not the foster care that is the problem. even if the foster parents are perfect, separating children from their parents against their will is causing severe trauma to the children and often hurting them more than what the parents might do to them. i agree with your second paragraph. the focus needs to be on supporting parents to take better care of their children.
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Yeah, it seems very strange to pin this on the hospitals. I wonder how significant their negligence was to lead to a 250 million judgment. Given that CPS, like the police, have no obligation to help, it makes sense to error on the cautionary side of Do no harm. Sacrificing the lives of some children and families for the greater good is not the type of utilitarian calculus the government should be engaging in.
- bluebaru 2y ago
  > it makes sense to error on the cautionary side of Do no harm. Unfortunately many hospitals have mandated reporter policies, which in some states makes them effectively extensions of law enforcement bodies (including CPS). My personal opinion is that this is in direct conflict with the need for privacy between patients and their providers, who are no longer able to exercise judgement about what is best for the people they are treating.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I think it is one thing to mandate reporting, and another thing entirely for the state to absolve itself of responsibility for vetting that reporting.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  > I wonder how significant their negligence was to lead to a 250 million judgment. The linked article makes it sound as if the accusation was entirely due to a bad diagnosis of a medical condition, which was easily contradicted by standard medical tests/imaging that was available to the hospital staff. But make no mistake, a $250mil judgement has nothing to do with the significance of judgement, and everything to do with juries that make up ridiculous amounts which are later reduced on appeal.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    bad diagnoses happens. Im more concerned that there was insufficient review to catch a bad diagnosis before the state took action, or in follow-up to a precautionary action.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family? From a practical standpoint, taking a child away from the innocent family is worse. Even if they somehow were to "rescue" the abused child, that's pretty much a lost cause. They aren't doing it to salvage the child, but to assuage some sort of guilt that they let it happen in the first place. The child will be placed in foster care, which at its best is merely inadequate and soul-crushing, but at its worst is some gauntlet of rape and abuse itself which few children are capable of surviving psychologically intact. So when they take the child away from the innocent family, this is almost certainly a net negative response. Instead of helping more children, they are hurting more children. It's a very easy answer, easily reached, and solidly objective. It's just not a comfortable answer, because most people want the answer to be different. > CPS must be one of the hardest jobs in the country. Jobs whose premise is fundamentally defective often are the most difficult. Think of how many times someone who worked for CPS or who was affiliated with them said (cynically) something to the effect of how "no matter what we do, it seems like we're always in the wrong". Well, that's because they are.
- petsfed 2y ago
  Do you have some data to support the position that foster care is at best inadequate? Do you have data to support the position that mistaken child removal is as widespread as even e.g. child abuse within the foster system? Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members? I absolutely agree that every time a child is abused in foster care, that's a damning failure of the system. But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. Nor do I share your belief that the foster system is at best soul-crushing.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    I need to give this a little more thought, but tomorrow or maybe this weekend I can dig up some studies to back up this conclusion. I think that it should be possible to show how that those removed from homes by CPS and placed into foster care have long term economic and psychiatric issues into adulthood that put them (more or less) on par with those who aren't removed and continue to suffer abuse as those people move into adulthood. That should settle any doubts about the "at best inadequate". Or do you interpret the meaning of my words differently? I do not actually believe that "mistaken child removal" happens with any great frequency, CPS tends to err on the side of caution in most such cases, though out of cowardice or incompetence I couldn't even guess. If I implied this in the first comment, then I retract that and apologize. However, though it might not be with great frequency, even the uncommon occurrence of that is horrible. >Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members? I do not. I would remind you though, that this isn't quite the gotcha you might think it is. I would guess that it happens quite often that they are placed with (distant) family, but that's not a good solution for any number of reasons. Though not always the case, relatives have higher chances of being dysfunctional than random chance should allow for, they often allow the parents contact despite CPS warnings, they tend to be elderly and less able to provide the sort of care that is merited. Even if we assume that children are placed with them half the time and that they are always a good placement, that only halves the sort of problem I've hinted at in the first comment. >But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. I hesitate with this one. I would offer to let you decide what the criteria for "permanently broken" is in this context, so that I can find the particular studies that would convince you. The life expectancy is roughly 75 years, and I'd suggest that if some large fraction of their life was dysfunctional, weighted to the earlier years rather than in old age, then this might be a good way to figure it. "Dysfunctional" could be somewhat objective, like being institutionalized, imprisoned, in the justice system, with debilitating psychiatric illnesses (alcoholism, etc), or just dead from any of those earlier than a person should die. But you do the definition. I feel like I might be stacking the deck with my suggestion, and I can't even think of a good way not to do that. It's all pretty fucking bleak.
sp332 2y ago
That's not what the lawsuit is about. It says that state agents were pretending to be caregivers in the hospital. They illegally searched the kids and accessed medical records. Also they kept the kids from their parents illegally.
Caligatio 2y ago
I don't know if you read the lawsuit but, if the statements provided are true, Texas CPS exceeded any reasonable definition of appropriate behavior. The child was deemed not abused by multiple doctors as well as Oklahoma CPS. Texas CPS proceeded to take the children away from their parents and placed them in foster homes despite the standard procedure dictating they be placed with relatives. The actual behavior of the Texas CPS agents was also egregious.
SirMaster 2y ago
I can't believe this is even a question... Taking a child away from an innocent family is so much worse.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family? Stealing a child from an innocent family. Obviously. That removing a child from their parents to a random foster family is an administrative decision versus action that requires a jury is in itself kind of shocking. (Next of kin is slightly different.)
elevatedastalt 2y ago
The problem with pseudo-regulatory agencies like the CPS and the "think of the children" argument is, while they do of course do a lot of good, there is no meaningful way in the system for punishing them for false positives. So it's not a meaningful self-balancing system that reaches a meaningful equilibrium. They are never punished for the horror stories they cause. There are of course super famous stories such as Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, but there are several others that never get talked about in the media but become nightmares for the people involved. I personally know of a family who moved back to India after their children were taken away from them for some time based on some stupid scare about a bump on the head the child got from colliding with a table while running around the house. The teacher noticed, shouted abuse, got the cops involved. Of course not a single person in this self-righteous chain received any punishment or even a rap on the knuckle.
s0kr8s 2y ago
Having worked in a position where it was part of the job description to periodically report parents to CPS, my experience was that it was actually quite challenging to get CPS to take up a case, even when there was lots of evidence suggesting abuse was taking place. In general, CPS seemed to work very hard to prevent false positives, and concerned itself far less with false negatives. At the time, I remember finding that frustrating, but in retrospect I think it was the right approach. Why? Because invalid reports are always going to vastly outnumber valid ones, in part because it is easy to be judgmental about someone else's parenting for a variety of prejudicial reasons, so "innocent until proven guilty" should be the default stance of any agency tasked with investigating such reports. That is why stories about shaken baby syndrome are so galling, because the faux-science sets up a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario, which is definitely the wrong approach.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
There is a good answer - probabilities aren’t the way to subject law abiding parents to the torture that is having their children kidnapped and sent away. You either have proof that parents are criminals beyond a reasonable doubt or you don’t. It doesn’t matter if some bad parents are missed - why should that have any bearing on the individual rights of good parents?
rossant 2y ago
This is indeed a hard problem. There's a rich litterature about this. Here's one reference among many: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818533 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818533

jimbob45 2y ago

No they don't? The standard in the US is "innocent until proven guilty". "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer".

bluefirebrand 2y ago

> But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family The foster system does not produce very great results from what I understand, including the chance that a child will be abused by a foster family. The statistically likely outcomes for a child with a loving family plummet substantially if they go into the foster system Unfortunately an abused child going into the foster system isn't likely to see their potential outcomes improve by a substantial amount Therefore, taking a loved child away from an innocent family is way worse and it's not even close

binarymax 2y ago
So by your argument CPS just…shouldn’t do anything? If foster care for an abused child won’t help, then what’s the point?
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  If they aren't absolutely beyond any doubt certain that the child is being neglected or abused, then yes of course they shouldn't do anything Their job is to protect at risk kids, not just shuffle kids to new homes The damage that a false positive would do to a child is unfathomable The foster system does overall help abused children, but fostered kids don't have as good outcomes in general as non-fostered kids
  - petsfed 2y ago
    Man, I dunno how opiod-crisis-adjacent you are, but I am very close to it. I cannot imagine that relocating a child to their grandparents is automatically worse than letting them stay in a home that stinks of burnt heroine, where their trash-bag full of laundry for the relocation stinks of urine.
    - bluefirebrand 2y ago
      To clarify, I'm talking about outcomes of children who are in families that aren't abusing them, versus children who have been placed in foster care (for any reason) Comparing outcomes of children who are being abused against children in foster care will show improvement generally. But there's still a pretty wide gap between their outcomes and the outcomes of children in healthy families Also, do grandparents really count as "the foster system"?
      - petsfed 2y ago
        At least in my state (Washington), CPS prefers to relocate kids to nearby family members over actual foster homes, for what I hope are obvious reasons. There is always a balancing of false-positives vs. false-negatives, in any attempt to restrict any behavior. And while I agree that the consequences of the false-positives are dire, sometimes unthinkable, CPS and its power to remove children from their homes is in response to something also dire and unthinkable. You seem to be arguing that the consequences of a false positive vastly outweigh the consequences of a false negative. Viewing the consequences of an admittedly light-duty false negative (that is, abuse or neglect that, for one reason or another, hasn't received a CPS response), and being on the periphery of another much worse false negative (via contact with a member of the jury), I am uncertain. Which is worse? Lacking the power to remove a child from a bad situation, or occasionally sending a child into a bad situation? I don't have a good answer for that question. I just disagree with the idea that either is indisputably worse than the other. Its awful that there is a situation that we have to choose at all. And unambiguously, the foster system must be reformed. The OP even quotes the family's lawyer as saying that CPS disproportionately goes after poorer families ("neglect" and "poverty" can look the same, even if the cause is wildly different). But I do not think the foster system is so broken that we should abolish CPS entirely and just accept actual child abuse as unpreventable.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  The comment you are replying to talks about "false positive vs false negative optimization". Are there cases where CPS should just not do anything because the probability of abuse is so low? Yes. If you are implying that we should take "no chances", then CPS should just take everybody's children away from them. After all, there's always more than 0% chance that someone is beating their child.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
Right but unless the decision is "never enter children into the foster system," then there will be a decision boundary that results in some amount of both false positives and false negatives[1]. We can, like you allude to, adjust the boundary to weigh them differently. How would you relatively weigh the cost of false negatives to false positives? The relative benefit of true positive to true negatives? 1:10, 1:100, 1:1000? 1. There's likely some other statistical assumptions I'm glossing over, but I'll leave that to someone more knowledgeable about that than I
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > How would you relatively weigh the cost of false negatives to false positives Imagine having a loving family that treats you super well and being taken away from them. Then imagine being placed in another home with new people you don't know, with new rules and attitudes that haven't evolved organically with you as you've grown. Now you start to get in trouble for stuff you used to do that your parents didn't care about, because the new parents don't have the same tolerance for the same things That's not even that bad really Imagine having siblings who throw the fact you're adopted in your face when they're mad at you Or having foster parents that actually are abusers themselves, but they're better at not being caught. I don't think you can really truly calculate the potential harm that taking a loved child from a healthy family and placing them into foster care could do
  - kelseyfrog 2y ago
    I have imagined all of those and still conclude that they need to be compared in order to weigh the pros and cons of making the decision. If one makes such a decision without weighing the tradeoffs, they're being negligent. If they refuse to make the decision, then they're choosing to never place abused children in foster care which is one of the options in the decision process, so they're still making a decision. There is no escape hatch. I'd encourage you to do the same imaginative thought experiment for the kid who's in an abusive bio-family. Would it change how you decide?
    - 2y ago
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
I knew a guy who was a surgeon at a big children's hospital. He said that, if a kid came in with damage from abuse, and they didn't detect it and intervene, the odds were 50% that the next time they saw the child, it would be dead. I'm not sure that taking a loved child and putting it in the foster system is worse than missing an abused child and leaving it with the abusing family. So I categorically dispute that "taking a loved child away from an innocent family is way worse and it's not even close".
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  > I knew a guy who was a surgeon at a big children's hospital. He said that, if a kid came in with damage from abuse, and they didn't detect it and intervene, the odds were 50% that the next time they saw the child, it would be dead. If I interpret this charitably, maybe they only saw the worst of the worst because of their position as a surgeon? If I interpret this less than charitably, you are implying that a single incidence of child abuse has about 50% fatality rate. This would be simply false. You don't have to go back further in time than 40 years, and it was commonplace for pretty much everybody to beat their children. If 50% was an actual fatality rate for a single incidence, population worldwide would have dwindled due to these fatalities.
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    I think it's like this: If there is child abuse serious enough to require hospitalization, and the authorities don't intervene at that time, the next instance of child abuse serious enough to come to the attention of the authorities has a 50% chance of being fatal. (So I guess that I'm agreeing with your "worst of the worst" interpretation.) In the case in question, the kid was already in the hospital. So at that point, we're at the "worst of the worst" situation... if it's abuse. So they want to be really sure whether it's abuse. Note well: This is not to defend CPS for the things they did in this case. I am merely saying that this is why CPS wants to look very carefully at such cases.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  It depends on perspective and who's making the judgment. It is absolutely worse for the love child. I think it's questionable if a third party has a right to judge and take action
mrcartmeneses 2y ago
This statement seems to be based on a false premise that foster care is bad care (it is often very good care where I originate from, UK) and ignores the fact that sometimes parents kill their children and that there are many children in desperate need of help. The greater problem with the CPS or similar agencies is underfunding. This leads to families only having dealings with them when the circumstances are suspected of being dire, rather than CPS having the resources to support parents in a meaningful way over a meaningful period of time. Such meaningful support helps to reduce the need for more drastic interventions and allows social workers to have much more knowledge of the families they are helping and of when interventions are needed.
- em-bee 2y ago
  it's not the foster care that is the problem. even if the foster parents are perfect, separating children from their parents against their will is causing severe trauma to the children and often hurting them more than what the parents might do to them. i agree with your second paragraph. the focus needs to be on supporting parents to take better care of their children.

s1artibartfast 2y ago

Yeah, it seems very strange to pin this on the hospitals. I wonder how significant their negligence was to lead to a 250 million judgment. Given that CPS, like the police, have no obligation to help, it makes sense to error on the cautionary side of Do no harm. Sacrificing the lives of some children and families for the greater good is not the type of utilitarian calculus the government should be engaging in.

bluebaru 2y ago
> it makes sense to error on the cautionary side of Do no harm. Unfortunately many hospitals have mandated reporter policies, which in some states makes them effectively extensions of law enforcement bodies (including CPS). My personal opinion is that this is in direct conflict with the need for privacy between patients and their providers, who are no longer able to exercise judgement about what is best for the people they are treating.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I think it is one thing to mandate reporting, and another thing entirely for the state to absolve itself of responsibility for vetting that reporting.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> I wonder how significant their negligence was to lead to a 250 million judgment. The linked article makes it sound as if the accusation was entirely due to a bad diagnosis of a medical condition, which was easily contradicted by standard medical tests/imaging that was available to the hospital staff. But make no mistake, a $250mil judgement has nothing to do with the significance of judgement, and everything to do with juries that make up ridiculous amounts which are later reduced on appeal.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  bad diagnoses happens. Im more concerned that there was insufficient review to catch a bad diagnosis before the state took action, or in follow-up to a precautionary action.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

> But which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family? From a practical standpoint, taking a child away from the innocent family is worse. Even if they somehow were to "rescue" the abused child, that's pretty much a lost cause. They aren't doing it to salvage the child, but to assuage some sort of guilt that they let it happen in the first place. The child will be placed in foster care, which at its best is merely inadequate and soul-crushing, but at its worst is some gauntlet of rape and abuse itself which few children are capable of surviving psychologically intact. So when they take the child away from the innocent family, this is almost certainly a net negative response. Instead of helping more children, they are hurting more children. It's a very easy answer, easily reached, and solidly objective. It's just not a comfortable answer, because most people want the answer to be different. > CPS must be one of the hardest jobs in the country. Jobs whose premise is fundamentally defective often are the most difficult. Think of how many times someone who worked for CPS or who was affiliated with them said (cynically) something to the effect of how "no matter what we do, it seems like we're always in the wrong". Well, that's because they are.

petsfed 2y ago
Do you have some data to support the position that foster care is at best inadequate? Do you have data to support the position that mistaken child removal is as widespread as even e.g. child abuse within the foster system? Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members? I absolutely agree that every time a child is abused in foster care, that's a damning failure of the system. But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. Nor do I share your belief that the foster system is at best soul-crushing.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  I need to give this a little more thought, but tomorrow or maybe this weekend I can dig up some studies to back up this conclusion. I think that it should be possible to show how that those removed from homes by CPS and placed into foster care have long term economic and psychiatric issues into adulthood that put them (more or less) on par with those who aren't removed and continue to suffer abuse as those people move into adulthood. That should settle any doubts about the "at best inadequate". Or do you interpret the meaning of my words differently? I do not actually believe that "mistaken child removal" happens with any great frequency, CPS tends to err on the side of caution in most such cases, though out of cowardice or incompetence I couldn't even guess. If I implied this in the first comment, then I retract that and apologize. However, though it might not be with great frequency, even the uncommon occurrence of that is horrible. >Finally, do you have data that illustrates how often children are relocated to strangers' houses, vs. with family members? I do not. I would remind you though, that this isn't quite the gotcha you might think it is. I would guess that it happens quite often that they are placed with (distant) family, but that's not a good solution for any number of reasons. Though not always the case, relatives have higher chances of being dysfunctional than random chance should allow for, they often allow the parents contact despite CPS warnings, they tend to be elderly and less able to provide the sort of care that is merited. Even if we assume that children are placed with them half the time and that they are always a good placement, that only halves the sort of problem I've hinted at in the first comment. >But I do not share your belief that children who experience sufficient abuse to be removed from the home are permanently broken. I hesitate with this one. I would offer to let you decide what the criteria for "permanently broken" is in this context, so that I can find the particular studies that would convince you. The life expectancy is roughly 75 years, and I'd suggest that if some large fraction of their life was dysfunctional, weighted to the earlier years rather than in old age, then this might be a good way to figure it. "Dysfunctional" could be somewhat objective, like being institutionalized, imprisoned, in the justice system, with debilitating psychiatric illnesses (alcoholism, etc), or just dead from any of those earlier than a person should die. But you do the definition. I feel like I might be stacking the deck with my suggestion, and I can't even think of a good way not to do that. It's all pretty fucking bleak.

sp332 2y ago

That's not what the lawsuit is about. It says that state agents were pretending to be caregivers in the hospital. They illegally searched the kids and accessed medical records. Also they kept the kids from their parents illegally.

Caligatio 2y ago

I don't know if you read the lawsuit but, if the statements provided are true, Texas CPS exceeded any reasonable definition of appropriate behavior. The child was deemed not abused by multiple doctors as well as Oklahoma CPS. Texas CPS proceeded to take the children away from their parents and placed them in foster homes despite the standard procedure dictating they be placed with relatives. The actual behavior of the Texas CPS agents was also egregious.

SirMaster 2y ago

I can't believe this is even a question... Taking a child away from an innocent family is so much worse.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> which is worse - letting an abused child slip through the cracks, or take a child away from an innocent family? Stealing a child from an innocent family. Obviously. That removing a child from their parents to a random foster family is an administrative decision versus action that requires a jury is in itself kind of shocking. (Next of kin is slightly different.)

elevatedastalt 2y ago

The problem with pseudo-regulatory agencies like the CPS and the "think of the children" argument is, while they do of course do a lot of good, there is no meaningful way in the system for punishing them for false positives. So it's not a meaningful self-balancing system that reaches a meaningful equilibrium. They are never punished for the horror stories they cause. There are of course super famous stories such as Mrs Chatterjee Vs Norway, but there are several others that never get talked about in the media but become nightmares for the people involved. I personally know of a family who moved back to India after their children were taken away from them for some time based on some stupid scare about a bump on the head the child got from colliding with a table while running around the house. The teacher noticed, shouted abuse, got the cops involved. Of course not a single person in this self-righteous chain received any punishment or even a rap on the knuckle.

s0kr8s 2y ago

Having worked in a position where it was part of the job description to periodically report parents to CPS, my experience was that it was actually quite challenging to get CPS to take up a case, even when there was lots of evidence suggesting abuse was taking place. In general, CPS seemed to work very hard to prevent false positives, and concerned itself far less with false negatives. At the time, I remember finding that frustrating, but in retrospect I think it was the right approach. Why? Because invalid reports are always going to vastly outnumber valid ones, in part because it is easy to be judgmental about someone else's parenting for a variety of prejudicial reasons, so "innocent until proven guilty" should be the default stance of any agency tasked with investigating such reports. That is why stories about shaken baby syndrome are so galling, because the faux-science sets up a "guilty until proven innocent" scenario, which is definitely the wrong approach.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

There is a good answer - probabilities aren’t the way to subject law abiding parents to the torture that is having their children kidnapped and sent away. You either have proof that parents are criminals beyond a reasonable doubt or you don’t. It doesn’t matter if some bad parents are missed - why should that have any bearing on the individual rights of good parents?

rossant 2y ago

This is indeed a hard problem. There's a rich litterature about this. Here's one reference among many: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818533 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2818533